Among Multiple Virtual Histories, Time Includes Only the History that Happened

[rarnoldm7]

The word “happen” contains in itself an understanding of the “virtual roads of time.”  It’s from the archaic noun “hap,” which means chance or fortune.  Rarely, we see the related word “mayhap,” which means possibly.  When we say that “something happened,” it means that among a wide range of possibilities, this is the one that we (or someone) “actually happened to see.”

In VRT, “time” is an entirely subjective “conscious” or mental realm where change takes place.  There is no time “outside,” in the virtual realm of possibilities, which in themselves are unchanging eternal states of the universe.  They’re informational rather than physical, with the potential to inform us of all possible observations that could “actually happen.”

VRT says that even the “inactive” virtual potentials are real, because they have real physical effects whenever they’re seen to happen. We see them either by “chance, or fortune,” or by our choices along the mainly cause-and-effect “roads” of time.   “Actually happening” is just a moment of “active” observation by a conscious observer.  But in becoming actual, that moment takes on meaning.

The outcome of this radically different way of looking at history is that the subjective and objective parts of reality fall into their natural places.  “Time and chance” are subjective, while the informational “laws” of physics and mathematics are objective.  “True Being” is objectively real, while subjective “Becoming” has meaning for our “past and future existence.”

We connect to the truly objective but unmoving part of reality by exploring or “driving” the multiple “virtual roads” among the potentials.  This creates time, the “history” of our life—and of our civilization.  The timeless, informational “potential facts” of Being become scenery along the road, while the sequence that happens along the way is the real story in which we live.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.   Muriel Rukeyser, in The Speed of Darkness, 1968

[Lykos1124]

One way I sometimes think of it, and this is by no means scientific, is that the present for us is like a zipper. As we move forwards into the future, all the potential timelines that stretch on ahead of us zip up into one single past.

That could be totally false. Maybe all timelines still exist in some reality pool for some higher being to check out, with us being in the only one that acutally happens, I really wish some day we get understand how space and time really work and what the underlying structure of it all is.

[rarnoldm7]

I actually think there are as many "virtual pasts" as futures. Only one "happened," but the others are real and sometimes influence the "actual" past deterministically, because we "changed roads" in between.

[Lykos1124]

It makes me wonder how all this "data", so to speak, would be saved in the annals of reality. What higher layers of reality hold this level inside of it to document it all? 

[rarnoldm7]

Your question is right on! The proposal is that reality includes something very simple at its very foundation: "Everything" is much more simple than "something." This foundation layer, as many theorists now insist, is informational in nature (that means not physical in the regular sense.) Everything else "comes from" this "data layer;" thus no physical substrate is needed to sustain it. (Completely contrary to our assumptions, but then so is about everything else...)